I'm interested in hearing from official moderators if there's an official stance/policy regarding what are appropriate actions to take on questions with bad grammar:

Is it OK to downvote a question with bad grammar, without even attempting to correct the problems through editing? Or should people not vote on questions at all if they're not going to bother to correct them?

Is this really just a matter of opinion?

If there is no official policy/stance, should we have one?

Other Responses from Around Stack Exchange

The best solution when you see poor grammar in a question or an answer, and you feel strongly that you understand the poster's intent, is to edit the question or answer to try to fix the grammatical issues without subverting the poster's intent. This will help all involved, including and especially future visitors to this site with similar questions.

Downvote...sometimes:

To add to what the others have said, there is a big difference between some grammar or spelling problems where the OP doesn't know the language (and cannot be reasonably expected to study a dictionary long enough to get it right), and where the OP just couldn't be bothered to capitalise "I" or include the apostrophe in "it's".

I wouldn't downvote just for lack of capitalization. However, I will certainly downvote if the post is not clear.

As a general rule, I don't see a lot of posts where capitalization is the only issue. Most of the truly problem posts have capitalization problems, syntax problems, formatting problems, and conceptual problems all rolled together.

If you can clean it up, please do. Whether or not it deserves a downvote will depend on context, and is really a judgment call. Don't be afraid to downvote a post that seems lazily written--downvotes are an important feedback mechanism, after all--but don't use downvotes as a grammar lesson, either."

Just edit, no need to downvote:

I'd not downvote such questions; it's the content that matters, even if the packaging is a little shabby.

Besides, languages using pictographic, ideographic or logographic writing systems don't use capitalisation, so perhaps people posting without capital letters are not native English speakers but Japanese, Korean or Chinese.

Why not edit such (otherwise worthy) questions and help the OP with a comment?

Poor question grammar. Not all peoples native language is English. In case you see poor grammar just edit the question. No reason for downvote.

Use a grammar checker:

Poor question grammar - This one is easy to fix; run your question through an English grammar and spell checker before posting it.

Just edit and fix it:

To your points of "poor grammar" and "poorly explained question", this is where the community gets to step in and help improve the situation.

Is the grammar of the question abysmal? Edit it! Give it a good once-over with a spell check, and see if it makes sense to you just by rewriting it in a few places. (Very important: don't edit code or you may lose a lot of context)

If you care about [Stack Overflow], just fix it, don't downvote:

Unfortunately, this probably does happen from time to time. However, most users who care about the site will not downvote these questions if this is the only problem. This is why we have edits. We typically edit questions into shape when we can if that is all that is wrong.

Related

We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.

32

Isn't the official stance that you can vote however you like, as long as you don't target a specific user?
– BenMay 6 '14 at 21:03

248

Considering a very large portion of users of SO are not English speakers, downvoting because of bad grammar is harsh IMO. I personally would attempt to clean up the post instead of downvoting it because of the grammar. If the post is all around crappy, bad question, no attempt, etc then feel free to downvote, vtc, etc.
– Taryn♦May 6 '14 at 21:07

+1 because I agree that the question should be asked.
– Matthew LundbergMay 7 '14 at 3:06

114

Is this site english.stackexchange.com or stackoverflow.com? It is being used worldwide and we non-native speakers do our best to express. If you help to correct my mistakes in friendly way, I am glad to improve my english. But downvoting just because of grammar issues?! It is very rude.
– Leos LiterakMay 7 '14 at 13:26

6

I feel SO is meant to be a long term, living, breathing site that should be a catch all for all sorts of programming issues. If that's the case, then why not take the time to improve the quality of the post to ensure that it is relevant and helpful to future visitors? Isn't that the purpose of the edit\review system in the first place?
– ewitkowsMay 7 '14 at 13:31

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I wish it was easier to nudge people -- English speakers with atrocious grammar and non-English speakers who might be learning or never learned the grammar well -- to improve their grammar without having such comments often being taken as offensive. When someone writes, "Can you learn me this?" we all know what they mean. Downvote? Nah. A friendly, "That should probably be written as 'Can you teach me this?" You might get flamed for such a comment. This isn't just an SO problem. It's a wider Internet problem and language is degrading with it. (Other languages suffer from this issue, too.)
– lilbyrdieMay 7 '14 at 13:32

5

@staticx Providing code, errors, etc are all extremely helpful when asking a question but as I said considering a large percentage of users don't use English as their primary language downvoting solely for bad grammar is harsh. Should they attempt to make the question clear, of course but many people even English speakers struggle with decent grammar. Bad questions should be downvoted, bad grammar shouldn't.
– Taryn♦May 7 '14 at 13:42

6

I’d recommend against downvoting specifically for bad grammar. If the grammar is so bad that it makes the question impossible to extract, sure, but that’s almost a separate issue.
– Ry-♦May 7 '14 at 13:45

4

If the grammar/capitalisation problems are persistent and wilful, then yes, downvote. I often see users who've had many an edit applied to their past questions, and they still press on with all-lower-case questions and txtspk.
– halferMay 7 '14 at 13:50

6

@MoathHowari Sometimes the problems are so bad that it's beyond the ability of someone to edit. Some people can recognize that a post is a complete mess even if they aren't confident enough in their ability to perfect it. Finally, it is not the responsibility of every single user on the site to fix up every bad post they see. People are certainly welcome and encouraged to fix up posts, but at the end of the day there are so many people posting horrific questions that sometimes you need to recognize that a turd just isn't worth polishing and walk away.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:01

12

I tend to assume that bad grammar indicates someone one is not a native English speaker. (I am tempted to downvote anyone who uses "u" instead of "you". Those kids can just get off my lawn!) If the grammar makes the meaning unclear, I will, however, either ask for clarification or start my answer with "I'm not clear on what you are asking, but it seems like you are dealing with..."
– KathyA.May 7 '14 at 14:10

2

For somebody who has more important things to do then stackoverflow, you sure put a lot of effort into this question. But I guess the tooltip message on the downvote button says enough: Downvote if its unclear. Or as mention in your link about english required: As long as the question is in salvageable English and makes some modicum of sense, it should be edited and improved like any other post.
– Hugo DelsingMay 7 '14 at 15:02

4

@Wooble right, I should not make assumption on the difficulty of learning english. let me be clearer: if someone can't learn english well enough to write a proper sentence, this person may not understand english enough to read complex reference documents either.
– Félix Gagnon-GrenierMay 9 '14 at 19:39

5

@Juan There's a big difference between a few spelling/grammar mistakes and almost unreadable post. English isn't my first language either (and from your username I take it, the same is true for you) and I make enough mistakes, but I think each and every of my questions and answers is readily readable without any particular effort. If people don't make a reasonable effort to provide a good and clear question in the expectation that others will spend time out of laziness I will downvote.
– VooMay 11 '14 at 16:28

16 Answers
16

As far as official policy goes, you're not going to hear much other than "users are allowed to vote however they damn well please, except for a few exceptions classified as 'voting fraud'." This is obviously not voting fraud. As for what you are officially encouraged to vote on, all you really have to go on is the voting tooltip:

This question does not show any research effort; it is not useful or unclear

Beyond that all we have is unofficial guidelines (which is generally just telling you how many other people choose to vote, not how anyone should vote) and individual users' opinions on the matter.

Do spelling/grammar issues result in a post not having been sufficiently researched? On SO, probably never. On English Language & Usage, perhaps, but not here.

Is it possible for spelling/grammar issues to cause a post to be unclear? I certainly would imagine so. Is every post with any grammar error unclear? No. At what point is the grammar sufficiently problematic as to make a post unclear? That's hard to say. Really it's best to just take posts on a case by case basis. When the grammar is bad enough that you become unclear as to what is being asked, that's when you bring in the downvote hammer.

Do spelling/grammar issues cause a post to be not useful? In bad enough cases, I can see that being the case. When the problems are just so distracting, so cumbersome, etc. that it inhibits my ability to answer the question/have my question answered, then it reduces the usefulness of the post, possibly to the point of being not useful at all. As with the above case, when is it bad enough that you think it actually merits a downvote? Well, that's something that you simply need to determine for yourself on a case by case basis.

Of course, as is noted by Robert these types of problems in a post may not be the reason that the post is bad, but rather simply be a good indicator that a post has other problems that make it bad. If the post contains a lot of sloppily written text it may be worth considering if the actual content itself was not well prepared.

Misspelled posts are an indicator of overall laziness. Generally they lack research effort as well. It is rare for a misspelled post to be well-researched, unless the OP simply doesn't know how to use his smart phone.
– Robert Harvey♦May 6 '14 at 21:22

6

Not that I vote for grammar, but if one does, is it discriminating to downvote for bad grammar from a native english speaker and not from others? How about texting contractions, or 'leet speak?
– Matthew LundbergMay 7 '14 at 3:07

48

My wife is dysgraphic. I cannot understand why she does not see that horrible typos and mistakes. It is not about laziness. And similarly when I write in english, I cannot see most of my mistakes. I am not aware of them. So I am unhappy when somebody punishes people around just because of mistakes in grammar. He shall have been a teacher.
– Leos LiterakMay 7 '14 at 13:36

2

@LeosLiterak: I think this is more about readability than grade school English. I don't mind small idiosyncrasies in e.g. grammar as long as I can follow the question.
– Benjamin BannierMay 7 '14 at 13:39

11

@staticx You wrote in another question that you downvote when you see a grammar issue. You did not specify any exceptions or conditions. I could only agree with some horrible questions where you do not get their meaning. But even in this case I prefer writing a comment "Sorry I do not understand you" over downvoting. Downvoting is laziness.
– Leos LiterakMay 7 '14 at 13:54

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@MatthewLundberg So you think that someone who is not a native English speaker who writes a question that is completely incomprehensible to you should have their question well received on the site simply because it's not their fault that they couldn't write a comprehensible question? Sorry, but that's simply irrelevant. You should be voting based on the content of a post, not based on the user. If the post is unclear, it's unclear. Perhaps it's because of the authors lack of English competence, perhaps it's because they're lazy. It doesn't matter, the post is unclear either way.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 13:56

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@LeosLiterak The whole point of this post is that downvoting a post for bad grammar isn't about punishing them for being lazy. It's a way of informing other readers and the system that the post is unclear, not helpful, etc. It doesn't matter if the post is unclear because they have a medical condition or because they're lazy. The post is still unclear either way. We don't want unclear questions on this site, regardless of the reason for the question being unclear.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 13:58

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@servy I am writing about a case where the intent of the author is completely clear, but there are grammar issues with the post.
– Matthew LundbergMay 7 '14 at 13:59

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@MatthewLundberg: Could you cite an example of really bad grammar and spelling that still makes the post clear?
– BrianMay 7 '14 at 14:00

4

I do not agree with @staticx. He continues to say that he always downvotes for grammar issues - regardless whether the question is clear or not.
– Leos LiterakMay 7 '14 at 14:11

3

@LeosLiterak: Not sure if you know what a downvote is for.. one of the tooltips says : "is not useful or is unclear". Very subjective. You vote how you see fit.. I am going to continue in my own way.
– BrianMay 7 '14 at 14:12

7

@LeosLiterak That's actually not what he's saying. He's saying that he finds grammar issues to generally make posts unclear/not useful. He is not saying that he downvotes them even when the problems do not inhibit the usefulness/comprehensibility of the post. You on the other hand specifically said in a comment that if you felt a post was incomprehensible due to its poor spelling grammar you would comment but not downvote. That is contrary to the site's guidelines. An incomprehensible post should be downvoted and closed until such a time as it can be improved.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:18

10

@LeosLiterak Have you considered how beneficial it is for the site's health to have incomprehensible posts downvoted? At the end of the day what separates this site from its competition is that it works very hard to ensure quality content, mercilessly so. There are plenty of other sites people can go that don't have a standard of quality. Here, if you can't post a quality post, regardless of the reason, the content doesn't belong here. Now we'll do our best to be polite about ensuring the content is fixed/removed, and try not to be mean about it, but that doesn't mean allowing bad content.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:20

4

@MatthewLundberg Yes. That's my opinion. Static is certainly within his rights to disagree. Just because I can comprehend certain posts with grammar problems doesn't mean he can.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:25

3

@Matthew Lundberg: Speaking of discriminating, most instances of plagiarism that I've detected myself are nothing more than a user with an apparently poor command of English (either based on their posting history, or even their background) posting content that is unbelievably well-written. Granted, my method of detecting plagiarism covers many other obvious variations of writing style and not just non-native speakers posting impossibly well-written content, but it's by far the simplest, most effective, and most successful (> 95% success rate) method I've ever used.
– BoltClock♦May 9 '14 at 15:59

Our comments was deleted so I only read the first line of yours. I meant that it's kind of a meta-meta-game to post a answer with so many obvious grammar/punctuation issues on a meta question about questions with grammar issues.
– ypercubeᵀᴹMay 7 '14 at 15:18

4

@ypercube lol it is an answer not "a answer "
– MuathMay 7 '14 at 15:27

5

You only found the second mistake, not the first one ;)
– ypercubeᵀᴹMay 7 '14 at 15:30

2

I agree. Edit the question, or make a comment. Bad grammar does not nescessarily make a question irrelevant (only indicate laziness or non-native speaker)
– Design by AdrianMay 9 '14 at 13:29

I think many peoples disagree and think we should leave the post as-is.
– user2284570May 12 '14 at 12:58

1

What you apparently don't realize is that it's often very obvious when someone is not a native speaker but is still making an effort to be clear, vs. when someone may or may not be a native speaker and just doesn't care. This answer in its current form is a good example of the former... the version prior to edits could have gone either way.
– AaronaughtMay 19 '14 at 19:48

I am French, I live in France. I learned English thus, it is not my mother tongue.

I have seen my share of bad English, especially among my friends and colleagues. They are not lazy, they just have elected to prioritize other things than English (like, say, programming or French for those who immigrated here). And for them, the Internet in general, and Stack Overflow in particular can be daunting.

For better or worse, Stack Overflow is perhaps the single best resource for an aspiring programmer; but one has to speak English. Reading English is relatively easy, you do not have to understand all the words to make sense of what's said, and can always google the parts you do not understand and even use Google Translate (although it comes out badly mangled).

Writing English, however, is daunting. Personally, I cheat: my browser is configured to "English" so that it points out spelling mistakes (some, at least) which helps a lot. It's not so good at pointing out grammar issues, and is not able to suggest translations though. Formulating a good question (or answer) is hard enough: need to synthesize your thoughts, need to present them in a logical order, ... and translating to English is another ordeal which is distracting, jamming the thought process.

I am glad enough that I got to a point where I am able to nearly think in English, but I have not forgotten how hard it used to be and I am still occasionally stuck on expressing my thoughts (lacking vocabulary, not finding an idiom I know exists, ...).

So, while I understand that reading a poorly phrased question can be grating, I would plead for tolerance. You are lucky that your mother tongue is the Lingua Franca, not so long ago it was French: how proficient would you have been? More than 1 billion people speak Chinese, how proficient would you be?

Thus, while you may certainly vote as you please, I would advise against down voting (just for spelling/grammar) and instead comment about the mistakes. You could edit, but that would not help the OP learning about them: give a man a fish....

And if you are not willing to assist? Well, just do nothing. Nobody is forcing you.

How do we encourage nonnative speakers who want to improve their English as you have, while not also encouraging those who can't be bothered to learn standard English and think it's the English speakers' jobs to learn their particular varieties of pidgin?
– Warren DewMay 10 '14 at 20:50

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@WarrenDew: I have no idea, but it is I guess the heart of the issue, isn't it ?
– Matthieu M.May 11 '14 at 10:33

8

@WarrenDew: In an international community, it is an English speaker's responsibility to try to make sense of how non-native speakers mangle the language. That's the price you pay for having your native language be the professional language of the world. I assure you, it's a lot less effort than it is to learn English even up to the standards of what you call "pidgin".
– ptomatoMay 12 '14 at 0:55

12

@WarrenDew This is a community for programmers. As long as we can communicate at a minimal level for discussing code and related topics, that's good enough. Encouraging others to improve their English skills is not the purpose of Stack Overflow. Edit the question to improve its phrasing and clarity... that's probably the best help you can give someone who is not a native speaker.
– BradMay 12 '14 at 1:21

If it is apparent that English is not the first language for the asker, but the question is otherwise good, take it with a grain of salt. I often edit posts like this to make them more understandable.

If it seems that English is the asker's native tongue but they're just too lazy to form complete sentences, use punctuation, or pay attention to the little red squiggly line underneath their terribly misspelled words, then I think you've got reason to downvote. Grammatical problems like this almost always go hand in hand with a generally crappy/lazy question anyway.

Posts should be voted on based on their actual content. Not how lazy or hard working the author was. If someone lazy can crank out an amazing question with little to no effort, it's still a good question, and should be well received. If someone slaves for hours on a post and it's still an incomprehensible post, it should still be closed/downvoted. We don't give A's for effort here.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:24

4

@Servy should "shows no research effort" be removed from the tooltip, then?
– John DvorakMay 7 '14 at 15:16

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@JanDvorak As much as that sounds like what my comment was referring to, it is in fact quite a bit different. The level of research shown in a post is actually noticeably different from the amount of time and effort spent constructing a question. Just because someone spends 3 hours doing research doesn't mean they demonstrated any research, while someone else can spend just 2 minutes searching around and be moderately confident (and correct) that there are not well documented solutions for their problem.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 15:20

3

@Servy: Just as you're talking about the level of research effort shown in the question, joelmdev is talking about the level of effort shown in the clarity of the question. Just like the amount of research done is apparent from a question, there is a tangible difference between someone who can't be bothered to phrase things in a comprehensible manner and somebody who is phrasing things as clearly as possible but who just doesn't quite have English conjugation down pat.
– ChuckMay 7 '14 at 17:28

2

@Chuck While those two concepts do seem analogous, one of them is explicitly mentioned as a criteria that should be used in evaluating question quality, and one is not, so the two cannot be equated. Just because effort in general can be demonstrated independently of how much effort is actually spent, just like research effort, doesn't mean that effort in general should be a criteria for evaluating questions.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 17:31

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@Servy: I don't see why it shouldn't. A question that has had substantial effort put into thinking it out and including relevant details is generally more valuable than a thoughtlessly written question. If some lazy sloth manages to write a good question regardless of the lack of effort, that's cool, but that's not generally the case. It seems like you're saying the effort is "behind the scenes," but I and (I think) joelmdev are saying that effort makes a substantial difference to the quality of a question even if it doesn't lead to flawless grammar. It gives a solid base worth building on.
– ChuckMay 7 '14 at 17:37

@Servy I'm not seeing anything in my answer that is contrary to your first comment, so not sure why the downvote. Nowhere did I imply that quantity=quality. There are plenty of short questions out there that are simply succinct. There are far more that are short because the author was too lazy to put together a quality question.
– joelmdevMay 7 '14 at 18:16

2

@joelmdev According to you if a native English speaker is just lazy and writes a poor question, and if a non-native English speaker writes the exact same question after spending some time trying, and failing, to write his question, they should be handled differently, and one should be downvoted while the other should not. I'm saying that what matters is whether or not the post is clear and useful. Whether or not the person that wrote it is a native English speaker, whether they have the potential to do better, etc. is all irrelevant when voting.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 18:19

2

@Servy: That is plainly not what joelmdev said. To wit: "If it is apparent that English is not the first language for the asker, but the question is otherwise good …". The suggestion here is that some poor grammar is just a lack of experience with English, but other poor grammar is part of a larger pattern of laziness that tends to permeate the question, and the former is not something we benefit from punishing while the latter is.
– ChuckMay 7 '14 at 19:50

4

@Chuck If the question is unclear then the question is unclear. Downvoting is not there to punish the author of the question. It is there to inform other readers what the quality of the question is, to provide feedback that the post needs fixing, to allow the post to be removed from the site if it is not fixed, etc. Your false impression that downvotes are there to punish the post author is the root of the problem here. They are a way of indicating the quality of the post, that is all.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 19:57

@Servy: That is not really what I said, and thus obviously not "the root of the problem here". I was not talking about punishing the author. I used the word as a shorthand for "treat a post as having negative value." We can extract value from good questions that use non-native constructions, but we cannot extract much value from questions that are simply asked in a lazy manner. There is a difference between the two concepts, and your characterization of them as "the exact same question" is the real root of the problem IMO.
– ChuckMay 7 '14 at 20:30

1

@Chuck You have that backwards. If someone is capable of asking a good question but just didn't bother to do so, you can end up with a good question by simply encouraging them to fix their post. When the post author is simply incapable of communicating with anyone the chances of being able to improve the post into one that is acceptable go way, way down. Not that that is really relevant. You shouldn't positively evaluate a post because the author might improve it later. As it stands, an unclear post is unclear, and should be indicated as such through votes.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 20:34

3

@Servy: Let's be more concrete. Do you believe that that "good day I am using X library and upon executing function 'Y' I get such an error: ERROR MESSAGE HERE. I ponder may it be this code I post: CODE SNIPPET HERE" is of lesser value than "my xcode proggy constantly crashing plz help homewrk due in 15 mins heres a zip of teh project" because the latter poster is probably capable of improving his post while the former poster actually made a post that is pretty good overall but is probably not capable of improving the grammar? I doubt it, and yet you're attacking the opposite idea here.
– ChuckMay 7 '14 at 20:43

1

@Chuck The first question is clear and understandable; the minor grammar issues do not inhibit the ability of the question to be understood. The second question has lots of problems, and the spelling and grammar is very far down on the list. So neither of your examples demonstrates a question that is unclear as a result of poor grammar, which is what is at issue here.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 20:47

2

@Chuck If the problems with the grammar do not result in the question being unclear or not useful, then there is no reason to downvote the question based on the grammar at all. If the post has some grammar mistakes that in no way inhibit your ability to understand or utilize the post you shouldn't be downvoting it just because you think that the author could have done better. You should be downvoting posts that are not clear, or not useful. If a post is clear and useful, you should not be downvoting it.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 21:00

The question presupposes that there's a single neat problem called "bad grammar". This is a very wrong approach. So the answer to "downvote for bad grammar?" is "It depends".

Bad grammar is a result of willful laziness or sloppiness.

Typically, it's very easy to spot: TXTspeak, all-lowercase, and more often than not, poor question quality irrespective of grammar.

Verdict: Downvote away!

Bad grammar due to ESL issues.

There are no rules, BUT as many other answers noted, as long as the post is reasonably clear and decent quality otherwise, down-voting is not constructive and contrary to the site's ideals. (full disclosure: I'm ESL and my grammar isn't always perfect, to put it mildly).

You're under no obligation to edit in the fixes; but it's the "right" and good thing to do.

However, ESL problems in otherwise good post should not be confused with a different problem:

Bad grammar due to poor thinking/logic.

Unfortunately, this OFTEN happens in posts with pure ESL problems... but if you read carefully, it's VERY easy to see the difference between "Had a clear thought in the original language and couldn't translate to English" and "Wrote a jumbled mess of words that wouldn't be understandable to a native speaker even before translation".

As with "willful laziness", this is usually easy to spot because the post would exhibit OTHER issues at the same time (poor quality, laziness etc...).

Please note that laziness is laziness. With a very rare exception, MOST ESL speakers come from languages that have capitalization and punctuation. Don't try to defend sloppy and lazy writer by "poor ESL" deflection when the post has no capital letters nor periods.

@PeterMortensen - I have a "ESL" free get out of jail card :))) Despite the fact that my Firefox has a spell checker and I was just too lazy to notice the red wavy underline :)
– DVKNov 28 '15 at 13:26

Maybe I work in the less painful parts of SO, but I think people are generally far too quick with the down-votes (the new Fastest Gun In The West problem, as far as I'm concerned).

If a post is irredeemably bad, I'll downvote, but it has to be shown to be irredeemably bad, and that doesn't happen in the first fifteen or so minutes. During that time, I'll edit (sometimes multiple times because the OP — or other people — don't refresh and trample over my changes). I'll fix grammatical problems. I'll comment that the post isn't clear, suggesting how it could be clearer. I'll move material from comments by the OP into the question. I do a lot of editing (14k+ edits) and commenting (23k+ comments) — compared with a mere 8k+ answers.

It takes a fair amount of persistently ignoring assistance to improve the question before I will down-vote it, but sometimes it is necessary. When it comes to a down-vote, there will normally be a comment trail of mine indicating why a down-vote is needed.

This web site holds content for years. There is a need to make sure that what survives after the first 24 hours is reasonable. But during the first few minutes (up to 1440 or so of them), it is good to improve the questions (and almost any question can be improved) when they're fresh in the asker's mind and the asker can clarify, expand, elucidate (and in some cases condemn themselves). I seldom manage to write an answer (or question) that doesn't benefit from some later editing. I haven't checked, but I'd guess that more than 50% of my answers were edited at least once after submission. I expect to extend that courtesy — of allowing time to edit to improve — to other people, especially to newcomers.

If the OP doesn't respond to constructive suggestions or requests to clarify, then they'll get the down-vote that they've earned.

There are far too many users who don't do this. Too many are quick with the downvote, etc and don't even attempt to improve a post. There are tons of crap posts that can't be saved and those should be closed, downvoted but the community has the ability to improve content and they should use this power.
– Taryn♦May 7 '14 at 14:38

6

If a post isn't ready to be evaluated by the community then it shouldn't be posted. If you're not done writing your post then hold back and do your editing before you submit the post, not after you submit your post. Editing should generally represent changes that you are making based on feedback from others that you yourself couldn't catch, not stuff that you just haven't bothered to fix yet because you submitted a first draft publicly.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:41

4

@Servy: People need help writing good questions and answers. I'm willing to help people learn how to write good questions and answers. It is a skill (both the writing and the helping are skills); it takes time and practice to learn how to do both well. Perfection isn't attained instantaneously.
– Jonathan LefflerMay 7 '14 at 14:41

3

@JonathanLeffler Sure, but that doesn't mean that the community in SO is obligated to tutor someone in their English in order to turn their incomprehensible question into an answerable one. If the post is unclear, it should, first and foremost, be downvoted ASAP to prevent low quality questions while it is being clarified, and downvoted to indicate its quality. If someone would like to take the time to teach the author how to fix their question, that's great, more power to them. If the post is successfully improved, it can be reopened, upvoted, and answered.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:47

2

There's a difference between 'ready to be evaluated by the community' and 'perfect' (or even 'sufficiently good'). I don't submit an answer until I think it answers the question, is grammatically correct, and moderately self-contained. However, I often find that upon review I can see things that could be stated more clearly, or there are comments which prod additions to the first version, or the question changes, or I just have more to say.
– Jonathan LefflerMay 7 '14 at 14:47

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@Servy: No, he didn't and I'm not sure if you are misinterpreting on purpose or not. He said he puts great effort on improving (several times if needed) questions that have grammar or other issues but his answers can benefit from some later editing. An answer (or question) that is clear but has a minor issue is largely different than one that needs effort to be understood.
– ypercubeᵀᴹMay 7 '14 at 14:47

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@Servy: we're going to have to disagree on that. No; I think a down-vote is a last recourse — not the first thing to do. Constructive criticism is preferable to destructive criticism.
– Jonathan LefflerMay 7 '14 at 14:48

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@Servy So? The fact that they were edited does not mean that they were incomprehensible in the first place.
– ypercubeᵀᴹMay 7 '14 at 14:52

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@JonathanLeffler Just because you downvote doesn't preclude you from providing constructive criticism. Downvotes are also not a form of destructive criticism. They are in fact another form of constructive criticism. In addition to that, it is very important for the health of the site that low quality content be downvoted. So many of the automatic mechanisms for managing problems don't work when people don't actually downvote.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:53

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And so many people who might otherwise come and fix the problems in their post are so discouraged by the down-votes that they never come back to learn. Witness that there a million or more users with 1 point of rep.
– Jonathan LefflerMay 7 '14 at 14:54

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@JonathanLeffler Yeah, we tend to drive away new users with downvotes and snark.
– Taryn♦May 7 '14 at 14:55

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@JonathanLeffler And how many of those 1 rep users that asked a question and never came back never got a downvote? I'd imagine a huge percentage of them. Some people simply aren't interested in improving at all, regardless of the form of feedback, or created an account to ask their one question and never bothered to remember the credentials as they had no intention of joining the community.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:55

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@JonathanLeffler I'm sure that's true of some people. It's untrue of a great many others. And regardless, the site was built specifically to be a place that has a high standard of quality, not a place that is designed to include everyone. A lot of people are either unable, or unwilling, to post high quality questions, and instead are only interested in posting questions that are not welcome on this site. It is much better for the health of the site for these people to not be interested in joining the community than for the community to lower its standards so that everyone wants to join.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 15:00

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I firmly believe that newcomers will perfectly sensibly perceive down-votes as hostile. I find them hostile; I dislike them; I think newcomers detect the hostility of intent behind them. I especially dislike down-votes not accompanied by a reasoned explanation of why; I think they're incredibly hostile. But I'm only one person. I just think that SO is far too negative lately, and far too hostile, and far too impatient. Yes, it takes effort to help people. Fortunately, the areas I work in are not so deluged in questions of debatable merit that I can't work with (some) users to help them.
– Jonathan LefflerMay 7 '14 at 15:15

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@JonathanLeffler Some people just aren't good at taking criticism at all and perceive constructive feedback as hostile. Others are simply optimists that perceive hostile feedback as constructive (there are of course less of these people). The fact that certain people perceive downvotes as hostile doesn't make them hostile. There are a lot of people that aren't going to accept the feedback as construction no matter how it is conveyed, so long as that feedback indicates that their posts aren't of high quality.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 15:38

Regarding the native English debate. Yes there are plenty of people who are not native English speakers using this site. In fact, it seems very likely that they are the majority of the users. I'm one of them. Learning to write foreign languages with proper grammar isn't trivial.

However. This is a programming site. All technical literature, manuals, documentation and expert advice about programming are in English. The Internet is in English. The actual programming language in itself is based on English.

So here is the harsh reality check: if you cannot understand fundamental English, you cannot work as a programmer. If you don't know enough English to ask a basic question on Stack Overflow, you are already not qualified to be a programmer. Tough luck, reality sucks, there are many other professions in the world.

As for knowing English but being sloppy...harsh reality check number two. A programming language syntax is not forgiving. The programming language requires that you write 100% proper grammar for that language. It will not tolerate one single mistake!

If you know English, but are too lazy or sloppy to use proper grammar, you will not make a good programmer. Because the single-most important attribute of a programmer is: being pedantic. No matter how smart you are or how much technical knowledge you possess, you will not become a decent programmer if you aren't pedantic.

What many people don't realise is that for someone who is not a native English speaker, grammatical and spelling errors make it a lot harder to understand the text. For a native English speaker, "their", "there" and "they're" are close enough so they understand a sentence with the wrong term without even thinking about it. For an English learner, these three words are totally different, and using the wrong one makes a sentence totally unreadable except for reverse engineering.
– gnasher729Jun 2 '14 at 10:05

Translated from Swedish: "No of course not. Using any language is fine. I'll ignore that you just wrote that comment in English and answer you in Swedish, so that you understand exactly what I mean." Now which language do you prefer? I can translate the whole answer above to Swedish, if that's more convenient for the average user of the site?
– LundinJul 3 '14 at 9:32

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The Internet is not in English. The main StackOverflow site happens to be in English. There is a non-English StackOverflow site. Programming mostly if not universally uses English terms, but there is nothing inherent in programming that requires English. (To put this another way, "Unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM").
– Philip WhitehouseJul 3 '14 at 15:58

As the majority language we expect programmers to have to learn sufficient English to program. We should not expect a high standard of English, we should expect a sufficient level to enable us to understand the question. There are already rules about clarity. Language in of itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for a downvote. Thanks for the lesson in Swedish.
– Philip WhitehouseJul 3 '14 at 16:00

The reason I explicitly pointed out the error is because if we keep writing all our code in English and only considering the English use case we ignore the complexities of multi-language systems. Obviously as a user for whom English is not the only language you are fluent in this is less of an issue for you. But to think the Internet is only in English is a disservice to the people for whom we write software. Bolting on internationalization is too often an after thought and it shows up badly in our libraries and software.
– Philip WhitehouseJul 3 '14 at 16:09

For me, editing is the answer for bad grammar. Even sometimes for answers that contain partial or all content which is not in English, editing is the answer even though it is very easy to flag a post which is in another language.

Two caveats I would like to mention though:

If you are not comfortable enough with English grammar, please don't edit poor English grammar. That one gets me when I am reviewing ... poor grammar being replaced with other poor grammar.

If the post's grammar/English is poor enough such that the question of the author is unrecognized, add a comment to ask for clarification. I suppose at that point if the OP has abandoned the post, there is no choice but to close the post as unclear.

It's foolish to vote down because of bad grammar, but that doesn't mean you can't use the grammar as an input to a heuristic.

If the text is clearly written by a non-native speaker, then as long as it's clear, the question can be taken as-is, or possibly quietly edited.

If the text is written by a native speaker (and it's not hard to tell the difference), then that's a canary: the text smells like it was written by an amateur, or someone who is not about to provide good value to the rest of your day. It tells you that the rest of a question would have to be pretty good to recover from that start.

Any native English speaker who is, or who aspires to be, any sort of professional simply has to be able to produce readable standard English when necessary. They don't have to speak that way all the time, or think that way, or like it, but they have to be able to do the trick (that's mild hyperbole, but it doesn't have many exceptions).

What about a non-native who has the misfortune of being quite fluent in english, but not perfect yet?
– DeduplicatorMay 11 '14 at 20:34

I wouldn't think that was a misfortune! (and I'd be jealous, since in none of my foreign languages can I write anything reliably grammatical). All I'm suggesting is that native speakers don't have the get-out-of-jail-free card that a hesitant or fluent second-language speaker has. That is, this question isn't about the quality of a question's grammar per se, but about the the inputs to the heuristic evidence that a question is carelessly thought through.
– Norman GrayMay 11 '14 at 23:12

Bad grammar makes the question harder to understand, and to answer, both for fluent English speakers, as well as others for whom it is a second language. In fact, it will make the problem doubly hard for non-fluent speakers, as they will have to translate garbled English into their own tongue.

Bad grammar is also frequently accompanied by a either a wall of code, or "my assignment is... can I haz teh codEz", or one of many factors that make up a poor question.

At its worst, bad grammar can even completely change the intent of the question.

NO

Of course, you could just as easily edit the post. Indeed, I will often edit a post if it is clear that the OP is a non-native speaker (and there are often clues, such as use of "I have a doubt" ). Minor things such as use of their/there , its / it's etc should certainly just be edited away quietly.

I took 4 years of Spanish education many years ago. Since I haven’t used Spanish often, I would certainly have many verb conjugation errors if I posted a question in Spanish today. I would hope I would be forgiven my second language disparity.

I do find it easier to understand programming code if the variables are in my first language of English. I confess to skipping some questions that are heavily salted with non-english variables—too distracting. Sorry!

Social “slanguage”

Rather than cringe, I chuckle when I run across social slanguage in posts like “superB”. And I would rather see “WTF” in a post than the expanded “proper” version! Slanguage does not often make a question unreadable so I just mentally translate slanguage back into my old-fashioned wording.

Rude, Mean or Angry Language

My opinion is that life’s too short for interacting with overly rude or mean-spirited questioners or answerers. I don’t downvote based on mean language, but I have refused to help questioners or support answerers if they pose their thoughts in a mean way. Argh! Yes, I’ve been in bad moods myself (sorry!), so I forgive and view their next question in a fresh and untainted way.

Gramatically correct but overly brief or not understandable language

OK, some questions consist of well-formed sentences but do not clearly state the question or fail to indicate what they are asking. My feeling about this type of question is that I am willing to take the time to read and understand a question so the questioner should also take time to write an understandable question. I usually post a comment to the effect of “clarify your question please” and I’ve even downvoted a few questions that were downright lazy.

Typos

People get in a hurry and fail to double-check their questions for typos. I get in a hurry with my answers and introduce typos, too. I figure my typos just about offset your typos. BTW, my keyboard sometimes fails on the letter "r" which results in many of my answers looking like "You solution is..." :-)

It is important for answers to be clear just as much as it is important for questions to be clear. If an answer is incomprehensible due to its bad grammar then it's not helping to solve people's problems and it's not a good answer.
– ServyMay 7 '14 at 14:43

@Servy I completely agree with you. But useful and clear answers will naturally outweigh answers that are incomprehensible due to bad grammar. And in this case, I won't really judge them with downvote, unless the answer is outright wrong.
– Andrew T.May 7 '14 at 14:56

To be completely honest, I am somewhat put-off by the stance that some of the individuals in these comments have taken. Perhaps they don't mean to come off this way, but as I scroll through this page I can't help but feel that there is somewhat of an English (the language, not the location) elitist sentiment going around here, and I don't like it.

The programming world is full of intelligent and talented people of every demographic. I realize that this is a primarily English-speaking community, but should we exclude people because they don't have a use for English outside of the internet? I personally find it somewhat rude to suggest that peoples' questions should go unconsidered because their grasp on English grammar - which happens to be considerably more complex than grammar in many other languages - is shaky.

That doesn't mean I think lazy writing is okay. I don't like "text-talk," and this is not the place for "leet speech." If you can't be bothered to write out entire words, you don't belong here. Please reform your writing habits or go away. You might be surprised how much easier it is to get a good job if you know how to write as if you do, in fact, know the language. But lazy writing is not the same as not being fluent. There are people on this site who are nice enough to help non-native speakers communicate more clearly. If you are not such a person, leave those questions well enough alone. People who don't speak your language don't deserve your automatic disapproval, nor are they inherently lazy, unintelligent, or bad researchers.

If a question is completely incomprehensible - which I find is not the case nearly so often as some seem to imply - perhaps a downvote is warranted. I am in agreement with @JonathanLeffler, however, in that I believe downvotes should be reserved for plain stupidity, extreme laziness, and crude behavior. I could go on about how I don't think downvotes are a very good system, but this is the wrong place for that. Before I downvote, I would suggest to the poster that they try to rephrase, or even just start over. If they don't do anything about it, then I might give them a downvote, or I might just ignore them, depending on their attitude.

If a question has some bad grammar that can be corrected, correct it. If you don't want to correct grammar - which would be ironic considering the little bitty things people are willing to "correct" - then just leave it be and go away. There's no need to make a question look bad because the poster doesn't speak fluent English. In all likelihood, someone will still answer it. Bad grammar does not always - not even often - stop the idea from getting across.

Deleting posts for grammar issues is even less helpful than downvoting them. Deleting peoples' questions does not make the people go away. It doesn't "improve" the community, unless "the community" is the holistic sum of all questions on the site, which it is not. The community is the people who post the questions, and the way to improve it is to help the members who need it.

Regrettably, I doubt this discussion will change anything at all. We could all spout our opinions until we're blue in the face and the world is crumbling around us, but the fact is that, in general, people + the internet is rarely a pleasant, considerate, sensible combination. Most likely everyone will continue to be impulsive and judgmental, and I don't believe there is much anyone can do about that in any case.

But don't let that stop you from trying. In fact, please prove me wrong. The only way positive change can happen is in little bits, person by person. Improve yourself, and you improve those around you. Help others, and eventually they will do the same.

I have found a large number of spelling errors in the replies to this post; or at least spelling errors as I would perceive them, and yet most people reading them would consider them to be correct. It would be churlish of me to mark them down in any way simply because they were posted by Americans. I am English and there are a significant number of differences between the way that English is spoken in England and the way it is spoken in America. It is a language that we should all recognise as being one that develops within the locality in which it is spoken.

A language is simply a means of communication. If it achieves that then it has succeeded and to downvote on the grounds apparent poor grammar, spelling or punctuation is failing to recognise the reality of language.

It is sheer nonsense for a native speaker to consider a dictionary-sanctioned alternate spelling of a word written by another native speaker, no matter whether they are from a different part of the world or not, to be “wrong”. That’s exactly like if your name is John Smith and you bump into somebody named Jon Smythe and then proceed to tell the guys that he’s spelling his name “wrong”. It’s insulting — neither version is wrong; it’s simply different. This is the sort of unpleasantry that unkind seven-year-olds regularly practice on one another, mostly out of ignorance and disrespect.
– tchristJul 2 '14 at 20:36

You should not down-vote any question unless it has some abusive content or language that is not acceptable.

The stackoverflow.com users come from a worldwide population. In most countries English is not the first language. For example, ASP.NET blogs and the Coverity blog and many others are continually translated to traditional Chinese for people who live in China.

Stackoverflow.com gave people authority to edit the questions, so people who have some reputation can modify the question to make it better in English, so you didn't need to worry about it.

Since there are many non-native English speakers, people should really try to produce their best English. Bad English makes it very hard to read for non-native English speakers, and in the worst cases it is possible to convince someone that the wrong spelling of a word is actually correct.
– gnasher729Jun 2 '14 at 10:12

1

Bad english can be trouble for people on SO but it's can't be learned in a day so their will be no-way for people to learn anything who just come to Stackoverflow for their programming curiosity.
– Anirudha GuptaJun 2 '14 at 12:09

I'm inclined to believe that both downvoting and editing for grammar should incur a penalty to the downvoter/editor; it would at least require them to have some conviction rather than an aptitude for meddling. As someone has already mentioned this is not english.stackexchange it's a forum Q & A site for software developers; as long as the coding part of the question is clear it should not be edited for English and certainly not in an environment which is globally used.

Having recently been the victim of some "grammarian" who wrongly took it upon themselves to correct my use of a split-infinitive (it falls to me to boldly state that split-infinitives are not incorrect English), I would suggest that editing for grammar should incur a reputation penalty - not sure how this would be implemented I grant you - and also the original poster should be asked to agree to the edit for grammar before it is implemented.

Isn't it amusing that this perfectly polite and topic appropriate question has managed to accumulate 4 downvotes as of now? ;-). Oooh, the power some people have, isn't it fun! Look what I can do muhahahaha! Give me strength.
– Kevin RocheJun 4 '14 at 8:43

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Under- or mis-educated hypercorrection always ruffles the feathers of those who had it right in the first place. My advice for those annoying occasions is to silently repeat to yourself the old adage: “Those who know more than you will correct you if you are wrong; those who know less, if you are right.“
– tchristJul 2 '14 at 20:46

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